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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Future of News

1. March 29, 2012 05:42 PM

   Harry Potter Hits the E-Book Market

   By Ryan Chittum

   I've never understood quite why, in a digital age that allows companies to sell directly to their customers, that book publishers, record labels, writers, and artists have allowed third parties like Amazon and Apple to seize outsize control of their industries. J.K. Rowling doesn't either, apparently. The one-time billionaire has long resisted selling e-books of her Harry Potter series. Now...

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2. October 24, 2012 06:50 AM

   Newsweek and the (relative) health of print mags

   Not all is dark for the industry

   By Ryan Chittum

   News that Newsweek is exiting print was hardly surprising coming two years after the Washington Post Company unloaded it for a dollar. But these numbers struck me while reading this Financial Times story on the news: Newsweek has suffered more than some rivals. Its 1.5m circulation is less than half what it was five years ago, and Publishers Information Bureau...

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3. May 18, 2012 03:00 PM

   A game of telephone fools the Times

   And the newspaper-of-record short-arms the correction

   By Ryan Chittum

   The New York Times posts a nasty correction on its Sunday op-ed by William Deresiewicz, who asserted that a study had found that 10 percent of people on Wall Street were "clinical psychopaths." That 10-percent-psycho baloney was the lead anecdote—critical framing for the whole op-ed. The Times has since re-written the lede paragraph almost entirely, disappeared the errors, and attached...

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4. April 4, 2012 07:51 PM

   All You Can Eat Magazines

   Ken Doctor reports on a promising venture from five major publishers

   By Ryan Chittum

   Ken Doctor has a very interesting report for the Nieman Journalism Lab on the new consortium called Next Issue Media that's ramping up to offer all-you-can-eat digital subscription access to major magazines. This looks like a magazine lover's dream. It's also a major venture, and it's one that could continue to transform the prospects for paid content. The inconvenience and...

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5. June 20, 2012 06:50 AM

   Another A1 Times-Picayune press release

   This time the publisher takes to the front page, eliding the gutting of his newsroom

   By Ryan Chittum

   Not content with dominating the Times-Picayune's front page on Thursday with a press release from its editor, the paper ran an awfully similar piece by the new publisher on page one Sunday headlined "The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com are here to stay." As if the Times-Pic needed to remind New Orleanians that its absentee owners have brought in an outsider to...

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6. November 14, 2012 06:50 AM

   Apples and oranges on Google and publishers

   Print performance is bad enough without putting a thumb on the scale

   By Ryan Chittum

   Slate tells us that "Google ad revenue tops entire US print media industry" in the first six months of the year, based off this chart from a German outfit called Statista: Business Insider makes it its "CHART OF THE DAY" and says "Google Is Bigger Than The U.S. Print Ad Business." That's (sort of) accurate, but misleading. There's an apples-to-oranges...

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7. July 10, 2012 06:50 AM

   Audit Notes: Daily Planet holds up, record collapse, presidential fundraising

   The Onion on the least believable part of Superman comics

   By Ryan Chittum

   This Onion article on the outdated Daily Planet is spot on: Frustrated fans of the Superman comic book said Monday the continued financial stability and cultural relevance of the series' Daily Planet newspaper is now the most unrealistic part of its universe and an annoying distraction that has ruined their reading experience. While they acknowledged that enjoying the adventures of...

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8. November 10, 2011 07:44 PM

   Audit Notes: Guardian Editor on Hackgate, Judge Rakoff, Confidence Game

   By Ryan Chittum

   Read Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger's Orwell lecture for an excellent overview and analysis of Murdoch's hacking scandal, and his paper's lonely role in uncovering it. On a day MP Tom Watson called James Murdoch a "mafia boss," Rusbridger explains why the press, the police, politicians, and regulators covered up for News Corporation: The simplest explanation is a combination of fear,...

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9. June 21, 2012 09:22 PM

   Audit Notes: Smart Money, NYT CEO, sushi chefs and nola.com

   Dow Jones lays off staff and goes all-digital with its personal-finance magazine

   By Ryan Chittum

   Dow Jones is shutting down Smart Money magazine, laying off most of the staff and going to a digital-only format just two years after it bought the half it didn't own from Hearst. Adweek: “What consumer wants financial advice in 30-day increments?” Scott Daly, evp and executive media director at Dentsu America, said in an email. “Not this guy. How...

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10. April 19, 2012 12:00 AM

    Audit Notes: Bank Run, Silicon Valley Small-ball, Anti-Free

    By Ryan Chittum

    Michael Lewis, who says he sympathizes with the Occupy Wall Street movement, interviews himself on what he would do if he were its leader: But if I were in charge I would probably reorganize the movement around a single, achievable goal: a financial boycott of the six “ too big to fail ” Wall Street firms: Bank of America, Citigroup,...

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11. September 5, 2012 11:00 AM

    Audit Notes: blame the borrowers, Walmart cashiers, newspaper prices

    The Democratic Party platform on mortgage issues

    By Ryan Chittum

    Henry Blodget somehow thinks that "everyone has spent the last five years trying to blame the housing crash on every conceivable housing-market participant (except the buyers who voluntarily paid and borrowed too much--they're apparently blameless)." He must have missed that whole Rick Santelli/Tea Party thing, the most prominent of innumerable examples in the blame-the-borrowers genre. Also, Blodget apparently hasn't read...

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12. May 10, 2012 02:12 AM

    Audit notes: Blodget’s anonymous Zuck fans, Ongo no-go, social news apps

    New York cover story dispenses with named sources

    By Ryan Chittum

    Here's the sourcing in Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget's New York cover story on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: "a colleague of Zuckerberg," "another early colleague of Zuckerberg," "one Silicon Valley veteran," "one Valley veteran," "A Zuckerberg confidant," "one insider," "a former Facebook employee," "a former Facebook executive fired by Zuckerberg," "A longtime Facebook exec," "some Zuckerberg skeptics," "One former Facebook...

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13. September 14, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: Bloomberg eyes CMBS, newspaper optimism, Weil on bank books

    Signs of froth return to commercial real estate lending

    By Ryan Chittum

    Bloomberg News is good to keep an eye on the securitization market for early signs of froth. It reports that mortgage-backed securities in commercial real estate are raising red flags again: Buyers are gravitating toward the debt even as lenders include risker loans in new offerings. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs sold about $1 billion of securities that include a $100...

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14. October 9, 2012 12:15 PM

    Audit Notes: BLS BS, another print turnaround forecast, deficits

    The LAT and CNBC let Jack Welch frame the jobs numbers

    By Ryan Chittum

    Don't miss Brendan Nyhan's excellent review of coverage of the unemployment-numbers conspiracy theory kicked off by Jack Welch on Friday. And I've got two more examples of poor press coverage to point out on this issue. The Los Angeles Times gave the nutty, evidence-free assertion the he said/she said treatment on the front of the business pages. Here's the lede:...

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15. May 24, 2012 05:59 PM

    Audit notes: Buffett on newspapers, Times-Picayune, SEC lets Lehman go

    A vow to invest in newspapers and protect them from interference

    By Ryan Chittum

    This is the most hopeful thing I've read about the business of newspapers in a long, long time: I'll quote at length from Warren Buffett's letter to editors and publishers of his newly expanded portfolio of papers: Berkshire buys for keeps. Our only exception to permanent ownership is when a business faces unending losses, a remote prospect for virtually all...

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16. March 12, 2012 07:59 PM

    Audit Notes: Charles Murray’s Lunch, Morgenson on Fairfax, Knight-Ridder’s iPad

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Globe and Mail's Doug Saunders writes this on Twitter: What Charles Murray had for lunch while telling the FT that the working class had become culturally irresponsible The FT's Edward Luce did the lunch interview: Our black truffle has arrived. Murray’s martini glass is empty. The waiter pours him a taster from the bottle of Gavi di Gavi, an...

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17. March 30, 2012 12:21 AM

    Audit Notes: Cookbooks and News, Too Big to Fail, Paul Ryan

    By Ryan Chittum

    Ken Doctor has a good post for Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab on why news organizations need to be ramping up niche product development, both for individual sale and as free add-ons to make digital subscriptions worth more. Let’s take one example. On Wednesday, the Boston Globe launched “Sunday Supper & More.” It’s a cookbook. It’s New England. And it could...

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18. February 24, 2012 08:37 PM

    Audit Notes: Daisey vs. Pogue, American Banker, LAT Paywall

    By Ryan Chittum

    Mike Daisey, of The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, and the recent This American Life exposé of Apple's outsourced China factories, shreds The New York Times's David Pogue over his apologia for Apple's labor practices (I criticized Pogue for an earlier post on the Apple controversy). In a mostly excellent rant (apart from questioning whether Pogue is being "manipulative"...

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19. November 6, 2012 06:50 AM

    Audit Notes: digital ads, margins of error, freehadists

    French publishing's online revenues make the Americans look good

    By Ryan Chittum

    This New York Times story is nice on the coming attempt in Europe to get Google to pay content providers for selling ads against their headlines. But this stat from the head of France's newspaper and magazine association caught my eye (emphasis mine) : In countries like Germany, France and Italy, where news sites’ online audiences are more limited by...

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20. September 24, 2012 10:51 AM

    Audit Notes: Digital First takedown, here comes the WSJ, debt and taxes

    The Awl roughs up Journal Register's flagship paper

    By Ryan Chittum

    Brett Sokol, writes one of the most brutal piece of media criticism I've read in a long time. He examines the promise of Digital First Media by looking at its flagship newspaper, the New Haven Register—and its website—and comparing it (very unfavorably) to the upstart New Haven Independent. It’s hard to imagine a worse-designed, more downright ugly newspaper website than...

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